OHNO!

This year 5,000 New Yorkers participated in the surprise gathering. As tradition dictates, guests arrive in all white to a well kept secret location that is only revealed 2 hours before the picnic starts, with the option to either bring their own tableware with charcuteries, cheeses and wines, or can opt to buy in to the catering element from GP for a box of picnic staples, five ways.

Do you know
what Diner en Blanc is? I found out last week that it still is possible to be a
seasoned New Yorker and not actually know, or to even have heard of, this grand, elegant, silly, boozy, theatrical event.

“I wish you
had told me I should be wearing all white,” Alyssa Ringler, our photographer that night, said to me.

“Well I’m
glad we didn’t. I can pick you out of the crowd. Probably would have walked
around for at least an hour before finding you if we had.” I said.

Some thirty
years ago, in 1988, Parisian man Francois Pasquier planned a small get together
for friends in Paris’ Bois de Boulogne. All attending were to wear white so
they could find each other once they all gathered at this public space, where,
in the time before Google Maps pin-drops, you’d have to just…look.

Diner en
Blanc, though humble in it’s beginning, has grown internationally and is
celebrated by roughly 10,000 people annually. Pasquier’s son, Aymeric,
recognized the real draw of the picnic was concentrated on not knowing exactly
where to go, who was going, and only to look for the most recognizable
all-white outfit to figure it out.

“A lot of
people like the secrecy,” he said in a recent interview with New York Daily
News. “The surprise is less charming if you already know where it’s going to
take place.”

And what was the highlight? A massive seaside lawn party twirling their white napkins overhead to wave au revoir to a tugboat as it pulled away from the harbor, lit by a full moon, French gypsy-swing jazz playing from the sound stage, as people cheered and tapped glasses to celebrate the moment.